we move

Mapping Railways in South America

After my playful time with railways in Africa, I now attempted South America. While most of the countries are rather simple to draw, just a few major lines to some mines, some countries like Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela have extensive networks. I did not take the time to look at each line about if they are still in operation but rather relied on wikipedia and UN information for this first shot. Thus I am fully aware that it does not reach a quality as the Africa map, but still “done is better than perfect”, or so we used to say. A good example is the situation around Caracas:

What I also encountered when looking at the countries is the conundrum of the landbridge. There seems to be at least 3 vivid proposals to cross the continent, via Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Chile or Argentina. It is not clear to me which of these will be carried out yet, but with the increased demand of soy beans from Brazil by China, the likeliness of realization of one of these seems to increase.

I am looking forward again to your thoughts and inputs. Somewhat it is still a too rough to use it to plan some fascinating travels across the continent, but at least it gives an idea.